Only Just
by Keridwen89
Summary: Woody's going into potentially lifethreatening surgery tomorrow...can Jordan swallow her pride and take the last chance she may ever have to speak to him? Oneshot.


**A/N: Hey! Just a little post-JPF one I did today at school when I was stuck in the computer lab for three hours straight...pity me and review people! Hehe ok well usual disclaimer...oh except I DO own the doctor I put in there, SO THERE! Hahahaha. Ok well read, people! And ignore the cheesy title! It was all I could think of!**

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She stood, hovering outside the hospital door, watching him struggle to breath, watching the nurses glance at each other over the bed, frowning slightly. She had come back every single day since he had sent her away, and had stood in this very spot, wishing that she had the courage to go in and talk to him. Make him see that he was being stupid; force him to listen to her.

Granted, what she said had been rash, stupid even. She had been feverish with worry, and had said something that she now regretted. Her motives were pure, but the gesture was silly. It could never be, she knew that now, had always known it. The gap between them was too large to bridge.

When she wasn't standing outside his door, or sitting in the waiting room, she was working her butt off at the morgue, staying out of Slokum's way, sensibly. She had also trying to siphon details from Renee, who she had tried to become friendly with, about Garret's case, but she, and indeed the entire DA's office was keeping a tight lip about the whole thing. Garret wasn't going to tell her anything either, he did not want her to get involved in his problem, still maintained that it was 'not her battle'. But she cared not; his battle was her battle, how many times had he told her that they were family?

She was under the impression that Woody had no idea she was there. But he knew. He caught glimpses of her sometimes, and he was filled with equal amounts of anger and shame at what he had said to her. Damn, he cursed himself over and over. Was this damage irreparable? And why was she still here? Hadn't he told her to take her pity and get out of his life? For that is what he had meant, he had banished her from his life altogether. He was sick to death of it, all the bullshit that she pulled, the crazy stunts she made him a part of, the unconventional case-solving methods. He wanted out. Well maybe now he'd have his chance.

The first surgery had not gone as well as everyone had hoped. There was still a fragment of the bullet lodged near his spine, and they could not get it out. Needless to say, he had not been able to feel his legs yet. They were going to attempt another surgery, in about a week, but it was dangerous. It was quite possible that he could die on the table. But he didn't care, anymore. An observer who knew him well would be able to tell he had lost his zest for life, his spark, his drive. He truly did not care, and Jordan wasn't the only thing he was sick of. He was sick of life in general, as a cop he had seen his fair share of horrors. And they all had stayed with him. One incident in particular stuck in his mind. When he had first arrived in Boston, he was called out to a murder-suicide, where the father had murdered his three children, all under the age of 7, and then killed himself out of shame. The world was better off, Woody reasoned. _But I wish he had turned the gun on himself first. Selfish prick_, he hissed in his mind, vehemently.

-------

A doctor walked out of the room that Jordan had been staking out for the past two weeks.

"Doctor!" she called, whereby he turned. "What's happening with Detective Hoyt?"

Taking in her red-rimmed eyes and dishevelled appearance, he figured she was a friend or relative. "We're taking him in for surgery tomorrow," he said. "Its dangerous."

Jordan frowned. "How dangerous?"

"Its very unlikely he will ever regain feeling in his leg. It is more than likely that he may die on the table, but he insists that we do the operation."

Jordan clapped a hand to her mouth in horror, not able to say anything. The inside of her mouth had gone completely dry. The doctor nodded to her and left, and she sent a furtive glance in the direction of the room where her friend lay, white and pasty, on the bed. She hoisted he bag over her shoulder and rushed out of the hospital.

She drove around Boston. She pretty much knew the place off by heart, so didn't have to think much about where she was going.

He could die, she said, over and over in her mind. She could die! The first real fear she had felt as an adult snaked up her gut into her throat. She had never felt like this before, all the times she had been put into life-threatening situations, which she was pretty much on a weekly basis she had just thought about how she could get out of it. Never had she been faced with her own mortality, not really. And she figured that if she was, she wouldn't be this afraid. No, this was the fear one carried for another person, and it was ten times more powerful that any fear anyone could ever have for themselves. She knew.

She had pulled up outside an apartment block. Surprised, she looked up and saw that it was her former boss, Garret's. Frowning slightly, but figuring her subconscious knew what it was doing, she got out of the car and walked up the flight of stairs that led to her friend's apartment. She knocked, and the door opened. Garret stood there, looking only mildly unsettled at her obviously unkempt appearance.

"How are you doing, Garret?" she asked in a falsely bright voice, which of course he saw through immediately.

"Oh, you know, wallowing in guilt and self pity. How about you?" he said with just a hint of sarcasm.

"Pretty much the same," she said. "Are you busy?"

"What did you have in mind?" he said in a serious tone. Jordan chuckled.

"A drink maybe?' she chanced, and Garret stepped aside, letting her in, and closing the door behind her.

Once they were seated, drinks in hand, Garret began to probe for the real reason she was there. He had come to see him a few times since his suspension, but this was different somehow. As if sensing what he was doing, she smoothly evaded the probes, almost instinctively.

"So what brings you here?" was Garret's not-so-subtle first attempt.

"Boredom, the need to see an old friend…" she trailed off, taking a sip from her glass.

They were silent for a while. "Slokum his usual pleasant self lately?" Garret asked, at the risk of inciting a riot from his wayward friend.

Jordan was glad of a topic she could rant about. "Actually, he's been a little weird lately. Could be just me, though, I've been keeping my distance."

"That's not like you," Garret observed mildly. "How do you mean weird?"

"Well, yesterday for example, Nigel dropped a vial and it broke, Slokum standing right there, mind, and he didn't say anything."

Garret raised an eyebrow, not really caring but humouring his friend.

"And he has been…well…civil. He does seem to have it in for Lily, especially, though."

"Why her?" Garret asked, interest aroused.

"I'm not sure. Probably senses that she's the one out of all of us who would be most hurt by rebukes," Jordan replied bitterly. "But she's holding up well."

"Of course she is," Garret said loyally.

"Could be because she keeps referring to you, and what you'd do in such a situation, as well," Jordan added amusement readable in her eyes.

"You think?" Garret said sarcastically. Jordan smiled genuinely and put a hand on her friend's shoulder.

"We'll have you back there in no time," she told him in a firm voice, daring him to challenge her. He shook his head.

"Not this time, Jordan. My time has come."

"Damn it Garret, don't do this to yourself. Your time most certainly has not come. I won't let you leave." Suddenly she knew she was not just talking about Garret, who seemed to sense it too. They were silent for a few minutes.

"How is our young detective friend, anyway? I haven't been in to see him since the other day." He chanced a guess at her mood. She only just stopped her head snapping up, sure that he would suss it out should she make it too obvious.

"I don't know," she said, untruthfully.

"When did you see him?"

"See?" she asked bitterly. "I saw him not half an hour ago."

The emphasis on the word 'saw' was not lost on Garret. "Was he asleep?"

"No, no, he was wide awake," she assured him in a hard voice. He frowned slightly.

"What's going on, Jordan?" he asked, but she again sidestepped him.

"What do you mean?"

"With you. Why you seem to grow angry every time Woody is mentioned. Even though a fool can see it is not anger that drives you."

"Lucky you're not a fool, then, hey?" she said, controlling the tremor in her voice superbly. _Garret would be proud_, she thought, and looked at him. He was staring into his glass.

"I'd like to think you'd tell me if something was bothering you."

"Likewise," she said mildly, sufficiently reminding him of his latest betrayal. Garret knew exactly what she referred too.

"You're not going to let me forget that, are you?" he asked softly, effectively breaking through a thin barrier that she had erected around herself regarding the whole cover-up incident.

"It's not my place to make you feel guilty, Garret. I think you're doing a fine job of that yourself. I just don't understand."

"I don't expect you to," he countered.

"I would like to try," she said insistently.

"I have told you. My boss…"

"Your boss," she cut him off. "Yes you've told me that version. I want to hear the real story."

Garret was taken aback. "What real story? There is no real story."

"I don't want to know what your boss said, Garret. I want to know what you said, and what you thought."

"You've been hanging out with Dr. Stiles a little too much, Jordan," he said, momentarily unsettled.

"What can I say?" she said, shrugging. "I'm learning."

"What would you do? Had I come to you and asked you to keep it quiet."

Jordan bit back the answer that came to her tongue, and thought about it. "If it was you," she said quietly, with emphasis on _you._ "I would probably heed you."

Garret looked away, knowing it to be truth. "But you'd argue. You wouldn't go down easy."

"Go down?" Jordan asked, surprised. "No, I don't think I would. Hell, Garret, I don't know what I would have done. I'd ask why you wanted to keep it quiet."

"He told me it wasn't our business to drag up everyone's private details. Just because he was there, doesn't mean he murdered her. Like I said, everything at the scene screamed suicide."

"I know," she said. "But I would have thought you'd dig a little deeper, you know? Done some investigating on the side. It was all there, you could have pinned Lancaster that very week. I would have done that."

"Yes, you would have. But I am not you. I didn't think that going behind my boss's back would serve me very well."

"What about Sylvia Moreau? It didn't serve her very well, either."

Garret looked away, furrows in his brow. "You're right," he said eventually. I should have dug, should have pushed for the truth. Like you would. But I can't change the past."

"No," Jordan agreed. "But you can change the future."

"What a very un-Jordan-like thing to say," Garret said. Jordan raised an eyebrow.

"I'm sorry this had to happen," she said after a while. "I'm sorry about everything. Maybe if you gave me some of the case details I could help you."

"How?" Garret scoffed. "What could yo do that I haven't already tried?"

"Hi, my name is Jordan, pleased to meet you," she said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Garret." He played along, taking her hand. "Welcome aboard."

"The Hard-To-Crack-Case express?" she queried and he laughed.

"Alright, your turn," he said after they refilled.

"My turn?" she asked innocently.

"Yeah. What's been happening?"

"Oh, nothing really that interesting. We got a heart-attack victim this morning, but Nigel's determined its not all it seems…actually he's doing a very good job of mocking Slokum."

"I can just imagine," Garret said dryly, and he could.

" 'I just want the truth! There has been a murder!'" Jordan mimicked Nigel, who was imitating Slokum, and she and Garret fell about laughing.

"Has he noticed?" Garret asked.

"Oh, of course. He's a sharp little tack, though not the sharpest in our humble morgue. There isn't a thing he can do."

Garret was highly amused, he had heard a lot of descriptions of Slokum, but 'sharp little tack' was not one of them.

"What else?" he probed still further.

"What do you mean?"

"Anything happening outside the morgue?"

"Apart from my increasingly pressing need for a housekeeper? Nothing much."

"You said before I wasn't a fool. You'd do well to remember that."

Jordan sighed. "I don't want to go into the gory details now, Garret. I came here hoping to forget it."

"Ok," he said, and waited.

"Aw, Garret!" she said after a period of intense silence. She figured that he wouldn't let it drop, so took the plunge, using considerable effort. "Woody's going in to theatre tomorrow."

"I heard they didn't get the whole bullet out."

"Yeah. Well they say there's hardly any hope of him regaining feeling in his legs."

Garret winced. "That's horrible," he said inadequately.

"There's a chance he'll die on the table, tomorrow. A good one. He is insisting on the surgery."

"He's a cop," Garret said, after digesting the information. "He probably thinks of being crippled as worse than death."

Jordan frowned; this wasn't helping.

"That's not the all of it, Jordan. You would not have taken this long to tell me had that been all there was to tell."

Jordan averted her eyes. "I did something really stupid, Garret," she said in a small voice. "Really stupid."

Garret was alert, hoping she had not gotten herself into too much trouble.

"What did you do?" he asked in what he believed was a neutral voice.

"I said something stupid to Woody, the day he was shot. Just as they were bringing him in."

Garret could not imagine for the life of him what she possibly could have said that would cause her such distress, so he waited.

"I told him I had feelings for him," she said, and winced. It sounded so bland, so stupid, so idiotic, said here in this little lounge room with its tidy cabinets filled with records and memorabilia from days gone past. Garret also felt the dullness of her words, but was too shocked to really understand it. He would never have imagined that she would say something like that freely to Woody. Of course, he knew that she felt something for the young detective, but never guessed it ran as deep as it obviously did. Even in relationships she _had_ had in the past, he doubted she would admit her feelings to anyone, let alone the subject of her affection. This was completely unlike her, so completely out of her comfort zone. No wonder she was feeling terrible.

"I see," he said, tone belying his thoughts. "What happened?"

Jordan's face hardened. "He told me to get out. I doubt he was just referring to his room."

Garret could have whistled. "He what?" This, too, was extremely uncharacteristic. A child could see how Woody pretty much worshipped the ground she walked on. "The world's gone mad," he said numbly.

"He thought I pitied him."

"Do you?"

"Of course I do," she said. "How could you not pity someone in that position? But that's not why I said it. Damn him, can't he see I would never…_never_ say that out of pity? I just…" she broke off abruptly, and Garret waited. "When I got that phone call it was like the world had been turned upside down," she confessed. "I couldn't imagine a world with him not in it, I just couldn't. And I saw him there, bloodied and humbled, and something snapped."

"I know the feeling," Garret said, quite untruthfully. "Did you go back?"

"I have been back there every day since he was shot," she said quietly. "I haven't spoken a word to him. I just don't know what to say."

"You should. It could be the last time you say anything to him." Garret felt awful, but it needed to be said.

Jordan's face crumpled. "I know," she whispered. "I know."

"When is his surgery?" Garret asked.

"Tomorrow morning," she said. "10am."

Garret frowned. "You should go."

"Its no use, he'll just tell me to shove it again."

"Somehow, I don't think he will, Jordan. Trust me on this one."

Jordan looked at him, half gratefully, half dryly. "Thanks, boss," she said, and her eyes conveyed something so strange, it sent a chill down the ex-Chief ME's back. He leant forward and embraced her, and she returned in kind, grateful to have someone she could count on, and wished for the first time that she had something to offer him. She did not know that her friendship was one of the single most valuable things in the ME's life, and he would never let on that it was. They were stubborn, which served them both well enough.

-------

It was late, now. The sun had abandoned them to shine on the countries in the Southern Hemisphere, and the moon was theirs alone. Jordan stared up into its face, and suddenly felt very small. There was so much to be found out, so many questions that needed answering, so much that science just couldn't tackle, as much as she hated to admit it. There had to be something out there, something bigger than her, than them all. It was infuriating, the way the world could cause her to think so deeply, to engage in the circle of questions that just kept going. It was a whole bucket of 'chicken or egg' riddles. She shook her head and pulled up outside the hospital that was becoming quite familiar to her.

So, for the second time that day, she hovered outside his door. He was asleep, thankfully.

"Can I help you?" a voice asked, making her jump.

"Detective Hoyt's surgery, is it still tomorrow?"

"Yes, who are you?"

"A friend. Can I…" she paused, teetering. "Can I see him?"

The nurse eyed her. "Visiting hours are over," she said. "But under the circumstances I think we could allow it." Jordan knew she was referring to his surgery.

Jordan nodded her thanks and went through the door, quietly. She didn't know what she would do if he woke up and found her there, but she was pretty sure she could chance a guess at what _he_ would do. She stood, uncertainly, before lowering herself into the chair beside his bed. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a wheelchair at the back of the room, and sent it a dirty look, as if daring it to be needed.

Screw your pity and get the hell out of here. The words came back to her, with less force than she expected. She couldn't understand it. Of course she felt sorry for him. What did he expect? She wasn't going to be jumping around the room with glee! And it isn't even as if she was glancing at others surreptitiously over his head when she thought he wasn't looking, or constantly asking him if he was alright. She knew what pity was, and tried to conceal it in the brief moment that she spoke to him, even cracking a joke, something stupid about his spleen. That was not pity at its worst. She should know.

She was tired, weary, though not physically. She was sick to death of the whole sidestepping thing they did, and was glad that it had finally culminated, for now at least. It would go either one way or the other, she'd either fall faster than she ever had before or jump higher that she thought it possible to go. And it did not worry her one bit.

Her head dropped, eventually, and she fell into a fitful sleep, thankfully free of dreams.

Woody woke on the morning of his surgery, and was immediately alert. The fear smacked back into his belly, settling back down into the place it had rested ever since he had been shot. Looking at the clock at the side of his bed, another bolt of fear shot through him when he realised that there was only half and hour until his surgery. The room was still relatively dark, all the blinds were closed, so when the door opened, he squinted. A nurse walked in.

"Just got to prep you for surgery," she said quietly. "You want me to wake your friend here?"

Her words took a few minutes to register in his mind, but when they did, his head whipped around. Slumped over in the chair, hair falling around her face, was Jordan. Taking his silence for assent, the nurse went over to and shook Jordan's shoulder gently.

"Ma'am?"

Jordan instantly jolted awake, and took in her surroundings. Woody was sitting up, awake, in his bed, giving her an unreadable stare. The nurse was watching them, carefully, as she went about her business. Jordan waited for her to finish.

"I'm sorry," she said when the nurse had gone. "I meant to leave before you woke." She stood up and prepared to leave, knowing she wouldn't be able to stand him telling her too, not again. Just as she was about to cross the threshold, Woody stopped her.

"Jordan?" he asked in a small voice. She turned, throat constricting.

"If I don't make it, I want you to call Cal. He'll take it better from someone he knows."

"Don't you dare," she said, not game to use his name. "Don't you dare give up on me." Her voice grew firm. "You're letting him win, you know. The guy who shot you. He's getting the upper hand."

Woody stared at her. "I'm being a realist," he said uncertainly.

"You're being a defeatist," she countered angrily, stepping back inside the room.

"I'm not. There's a good chance I…" he couldn't bring himself to say it.

Jordan frowned. "Well at the risk of being accused of pitying you…" she began.

"Don't start," he cut her off. "I'm not in the mood."

She closed her mouth abruptly.

"I guess I'll leave you to your brooding, then," she said stiffly, preparing again to leave, half expecting him to call her back again.

"Stay," he said, hating himself. This was not supposed to happen! He should be in control! But when you were faced with imminent death, control seems to wither into insignificance. Jordan turned around, surprise etched on her face. Whatever she had expected, it was clearly not this.

"What?" she asked. Woody frowned; she was going to make him suffer.

"Stay until the surgery," he repeated, completely shattering the hard resolve she had just been erecting. She nodded once, and went back to the chair, sitting down.

"So we're friends again?" she asked, a little too loudly perhaps. She was trying to bring some normalcy back to the situation, which he fully appreciated.

"Friends," he said with certainty, chancing a grin, and her face broke into a smile. She took his hand, and squeezed as though their lives depended on it, not leaving his side until the nurse came and wheeled him away.

"Fight him, Woody," she said, referring to the shooter.

"I'm not sure I can," he whispered back, watching her try to keep up with the pace of the bed.

"Nonsense," she scoffed. "Since when does Detective Hoyt let the bad guy get the better of him?"

He smiled weakly at her, immensely grateful they had both come to their senses. He said as much to Jordan, who raised her eyebrow suggestively.

"That's what you think," she said. "As soon as you're up again, the war's back on. Every man for himself."

"Somehow, Jordan, that phrase is just so adequate for you!" he said, and she watched him disappear into the theatre, the silly grin she knew so well plastered both on his face, and in her mind. Not trusting herself in the least, she rushed out of the hospital, and drove home.

_Every man for himself. _


End file.
